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MEET EVGENIA CITKOWITZ (9/2010)
by Bonnie O'Brian

What did you most like to do when you were a child?

Evgenia Citkowitz

I grew up in England and went to boarding school there. When I wasn’t at school, I liked to roam feral in the fields around our house – we lived in a rural area in Kent. My first passion was for music: I loved playing the piano.

When you were a child did you ever have moments when you decided that you were going to be a writer when you grew up?

I always wanted to write, but it took me a while, I was in my twenties before I had the confidence and experience to think that I might have something worthwhile to say.

Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?

I write every day during the week. I have children so I’m bound by the tide of their school days and terms. I have long days and short days; sometimes no days, but I try to be flexible. Being a parent is a lesson in that. I write in the morning and keep going for as long as I can.

Where do you get your ideas?

Writing is metamorphic process. Sometimes I’ll start with a shard of experience, and then subject it to a trial of fire until it becomes something else, and sometimes it’s more mysterious, a thought that occurs, extracted from the atmosphere. I take inspiration from surrounding topography, emotional and physical. Sometimes it’s obvious, such as in my novella, “Ether”, where Los Angeles forms the backdrop of the story, and sometimes the influence is more subtle.

What gave you the idea for your story “The Clearance”?

I started thinking about my short story “The Clearance” after handling my grandmother’s papers after her death. Some of the letters hadn’t been touched in sixty years and it struck me how laden these objects were. From that my character, George Barrow, evolved. A haunted soul who clears houses.

What are the topics of some of your stories?

I wrote the stories randomly. I wrote about whatever interested me at the time. But when I looked back, I saw that many of them were concerned with identity, people searching for it, for connectedness. The throng and muddle of family life is another subject that seems to crop up. Also, our voyeuristic society: the underbelly of the Internet.